Luke Webster
“I was keen to put my interests and skills in communications to use but was a catch 22. Lack of experience was preventing me from moving to the next phase of my career but no one was willing to offer me a chance.
I had seen that knowledge of social media and online communications had become pretty hot in demand and Internet Studies offered an opportunity to diversify my skills and explore emerging trends.
What’s the best thing about this degree?
It’s relevant, timely, practical and fun. We got to study things as they were happening, like the Kony 2012 campaign, so the skills we were learning were immediately and directly applicable to the real world.
Choosing to study fully online maximised my experience of Internet Studies and I really enjoyed how engaging the course was, making full use of the tools and channels available on the web. Working together online was often the most rewarding part of the degree, and was directly relevant to the way we work in the modern workplace.
My proudest study achievement was my final Web 507 project, where I created a range of online content to explain the concept of transmedia in a creative and engaging way. It was a huge amount of fun to create and gave me the highest mark I’d received for any project at university.
I’d love to go back to my early career and convince myself to start postgraduate studies earlier on, but I think everything happened at the right time and it took my cumulative experiences to bring me here.
How has this degree benefited your current role?
My knowledge of communication principles, of new and emerging platforms, my skills in writing for different audiences and platforms, and methods for engaging with communities are important in carrying out my role, where I help to create and develop concepts and content and run communications campaigns across multiple platforms.
What is your greatest career achievement to date?
I helped design and oversee the ‘Humans of Curtin’ equity campaign, which is all about celebrating people from all walks of life and demonstrating that people from all backgrounds can succeed in higher education. The campaign is centred on storytelling. We collect stories from students and staff within the Curtin community and publish these online, similar to Humans of New York. The stories are shared across a variety of digital and print platforms and have organically performed incredibly well.
The second component to this campaign was to design marketing collateral targeted towards equity target groups within the community. We developed visual and audio advertisements that promote positive messaging around racial, sexual and geographical diversity and published these in selected metro and regional places all around the state. This allowed the University to connect with niche and wide-ranging community groups beyond the bounds of who we usually communicate with and advertise to.
Humans of Curtin has attracted attention from around the University, including staff at senior levels. It’s also demonstrated the value of organic content for the use in Curtin marketing campaigns. I’m immensely proud of this project and it’s allowed me to utilise the perfect combination of my creative interests and learned skills.
What’s next?
I’ve just begun my PhD in Internet Studies. I want to build up a profile as an academic and pop culture commentator, and hopefully an expert in transmedia. I’m interested to see where my studies might take me around the world.
Beyond that I think I’d like to eventually engage in teaching and lecturing. One day I’d like to produce a great creative work. I feel like my study is leading me to do something creative.”
